Reflection-+Speech

Topic
toc ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: How do great speakers persuade groups or individuals to follow them? and How does understanding the logic of the speaker increase our understanding?
 * Speeches **

Common Core Standards

 * SL.9-10.6**. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
 * RL.9-10.2.** Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
 * RI.9-10.9.** Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance including how they address related themes and concepts.
 * W.9-10.2.**Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

Suggested Student Objectives

 * Identify and analyze the effect of rhetorical strategies in speeches such as alliteration, repetition, and extended metaphors.
 * Apply rhetorical strategies to essay writing projects of their own.

Suggested Additional Readings

 * "Gettysburg Address" (Abraham Lincoln)
 * "Address at the March on Washington" (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
 * "Sinews of Peace Address" (Winston Churchill)
 * "A Whisper of AIDS" (Mary Fischer)
 * Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1949 (William Faulkner)
 * Excerpt from "On Civil Disobedience," (Mohandas K. Gandhi) and "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
 * Brutus Addresses Roman Citizenry on the Death of Julius Caesar
 * Marc Antony Addresses Roman Citizenry on the Death of Julius Caesar

Resource Links
Historical Speeches American Rhetoric Speech Bank The History Place - Great Speeches Collection Classic British and American Essays and Speeches
 * Ghandi Advocates Policy of Nonviolence(video)
 * I Have a Dream-address at the March on Washington(audio)

Activities
1. Select a one-minute passage from one of the speeches reviewed and recite it from memory. Include an introduction that explains: 2. Compare Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with Martin Luther King Jr.'s Address at the March on Washington and explain why these are both considered great speeches. Be specific and cite from the texts. Begin by identifying the elements of a good speech. State your thesis clearly and include at least three pieces of evidence to support it. 3. Your assignment is to compose a persuasive text about an issue of justice that is important to you. You will choose an appropriate // audience // and // genre //for your // argument //. Conduct research as needed to help you clarify your issue and to support your argument. Consider the whole range of views on your topic and what information you might include to address these views.
 * The occasion/context of the speech
 * Its literary and historical significance

Assessment
Your assignment is to write two original texts that reflect two distinctive voices you possess. You will share one of the two in an oral presentation. Each text should demonstrate how you present yourself in two different contexts, roles, or subcultures.

Write an informative/explanatory essay in which you discuss how two literary texts studied this year illustrate Faulkner's thesis in his 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. State your thesis clearly and include at least three pieces of evidence to support it.